The Scientists: A Family Romance

The Scientists: A Family Romance è il titolo del nuovo romanzo di Marco Roth (fondatore del magazine n+1), edito da Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Adam Kirsch lo definisce "magnificamente intelligente e commovente". "Roth’s childhood, he reveals, was the source of a double trauma, one dramatic, one so subtle that it takes him much of the book to fully understand it. The obvious trauma came when he was 14 years old and learned that his father had AIDS. Eugene Roth had been infected, his son was told, in a laboratory accident: A medical researcher working on sickle-cell anemia, he accidentally pricked himself with a used needle. Four years later, Roth’s father died, too early to be helped by the later-generation drugs that have made AIDS into a manageable condition. In the interim, Roth writes, his life was dominated by the need for secrecy: He had been instructed never to mention to anyone that his father had this stigmatizing disease. ... This is the second trauma that Roth endured as a child: the sense that he was growing up in a home that was secretive and hypocritical". tabletmag.